


You cannot put a fire out/cannot fold a flood

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [19]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Action & Romance, Awkward Crush, F/M, Mutual Pining, Warden senses, that awkward feeling when you should be fighting but are trying not to crush on someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 20:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18156503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: After the most awkward haircut in Ferelden, Caitwyn and Alistair both struggle with their FEELINGS.  Each for very different reasons.  Caitwyn wants it to go away; Alistair wants to throw himself at her feet.If only these pesky darkspawn and demons wouldn't keep showing up.Many thanks to n7chelle, redpandadragon, lila, and Phox of the Writer's Workshop.  <3  You guys made this so much better.





	You cannot put a fire out/cannot fold a flood

**Author's Note:**

> While the Warden sense of darkspawn, particularly the Calling, is described as a song, I take a little detour and say every Warden can sense them a little differently. Auditory input is just the most common. Caitwyn senses the darkspawn in a tactile sense on her body, while Alistair smells them. Right in the nose, poor guy.

_ Thank the Maker for darkspawn. _

Caitwyn didn’t pause to consider the incongruous statement.  She had more pressing concerns. Like the currently on fire village of Honnleath.  Or the darkspawn that infested it. 

On the path to the village itself, just before they reached a row of burning houses, the darkspawn charged.  One genlock at the back of the pack stood its ground and pulled back on its bow. Caitwyn sucked in a hard breath and drew an arrow from her quiver only to be outdrawn by the creature.  The filth-covered arrow arched toward her, the arrowhead black and glinting in the afternoon sun and heat shimmer of the fires. 

Heart pounding, she dove forward, ducking under the path of the arrow and rolled back to her feet as she drew an arrow, re-knocking her arrow and fired right back at the creature that had targeted her.  The arrow flew wide of the mark, and her mouth thinned to a grim line as more darkspawn closed in on her. Their oil-slick presence crawled along her skin and inside her mind, burrowing and wiggling into her awareness like worms.

That worm-crawl sensation wiggled along her scalp, and she turned just in time to face a genlock as it suddenly appeared behind her.  A wickedly curved dagger arced down for her heart. The scar on her back—the scar earned in Ostagar—burned and writhed, the memory of that dark and desperate night echoed in her mind.  The fire of the houses was the signal fire, only destruction and loss in their wake. That night a dagger had found her and she would have hit the floor if someone hadn’t been there to catch her.

Mind turning to  _ him _ —to the one person she didn’t want to think about—she snapped herself back to the present in an instant and caught the blade on her bow.  Sten’s lessons moved her body without reference to her mind, and she turned the blade to let the creature’s momentum do the work for her. It was suddenly overreaching and off balance, and she twisted her hip and brought her heel down on its knee.  Hard. It’s leg collapsed with a yowl of pain, and the oily worms writhed on her skin again. Her stomach clenched, but she clamped her teeth shut against the flare of nausea. 

She raised her bow and feathered the creature’s head with an arrow at point-blank range.  

The oppressive weight of the darkness on her body lifted a fraction, but the darkspawn felt their pack member die as well.  Howls filled the smoky air, and Caitwyn sprang backwards on instinct as another blade reached for her. Another genlock had snuck through the line Alistair, Sten and Zevran made, and Caitwyn tumbled backwards, keeping her movements erratic and herself out of reach.

She should lure the darkspawn back to that line, back to where dangerous men with swords would tear it apart, but she couldn’t make herself do it.  Instead, she retreated further and further as if her body refused to get closer to the hearth-stone warmth that Alistair radiated. Warm and steady where the darkspawn were filth and oil and disease across her body.

There was a dagger at her hip, but she recalled cutting down men in Denerim.  Blood on her hands, their last foul breaths on her cheeks, the light leaving their eyes.  She could not bring herself to draw that dagger, even with the genlock closing in on her. Her hand curled tight and pale-knuckled on her bow.

Heat suffused her skin as if another fire had started, but this was not the heat of burning wood.  Instead, it was a flame that burned away the corruption that crawled across her skin, leaving her warm and clean like she’d just sunned herself on a hot roof.  With the warmth only she could feel came the hard, metallic crash of a shield bashing into darkspawn armor. Alistair, helm streaked with soot, stood over the creature and wasted no time running it through as it tried to rise.

For the space of a moment she met hazel eyes that held a silent question,  _ you alright? _ and Caitwyn’s mind raced to answer.   _ Yes, no, now that you’re here, go away I don’t need you, don’t want you _ .  And finally:  _ With you I am. _

She bit the inside of her cheek and nodded once, letting her eyes go flat.  He cocked his head to the side, like her dog did when he was confused by her, but she jerked her chin toward the gap he had left in their line.  While Sten’s heavy, two-handed sword was used to deadly effect, felling the swarming darkspawn like a man mowing hay, more darkspawn oozed over the ground and pressed at the edges of Alistar’s radiating warmth.  

He charged the gap, pinning a darkspawn between his shield and Zevran’s quick daggers, the creature dying in a gout of blood and a ratting gurgle.  

Caitwyn clenched her jaw and pushed away the writhing tangle of her heart.  She had a  _ job _ to do, and that was what she had to focus on.  The fires were out of control, clawing out from the homes they consumed to eat up the summer-dry grass, and there were more darkspawn in the village.  She could feel them as they felt her, and they were coming for her—for them. 

Coughing and parched, Caitwyn held her breath with every arrow drawn and loosed.  The smoke made her eyes water and itch, but she found her targets and her arrows sank into throats and eyes, they found gaps in armor and slowly the darkspawn were driven back around the bend into the village proper and then past the central well that sat smack in the middle of a small, once-green patch surrounded by the skeletons of homes.  A stench rose from the well, and Caitwyn did not dare look down in it for what she might find there. Not now. Not when she had to be in control. The homes around her now had been modest ones and the rest of the village sat perched on a slight hill above their current position.

The main pack of darkspawn sat there like a pulsating growth.  

Six pairs of eyes—seven if she counted Maethor’s—fixed on her, and she gestured them forward with two fingers pointing up the hill followed by a number count of twelve.  A silent communication of a sort that was part thief’s hand-cant and military signals, cobbled together in such a way that only meant anything to this small group of people she had with her now.   Alistair confirmed her count of darkspawn, and the others took a moment to ready themselves. Leliana tested her bow string, while Zevran coated his daggers with a smear of greenish oil that only left a slight sheen on the blade.  Morrigan and Wynne both readied their staves, while Sten and Alistair worked their shoulders to make their armor settle.

Caitwyn was as ready as she would ever be, and gave the signal to move.  Sten and Alistair charged up the hill while Caitwyn, Zevran and Leliana ghosted into the smoke, pulling cloths up over their noses and mouths.  At the first silvery clash of metal, Zevran launched himself from their wispy cover and sank his daggers into the back of a hurlock. Caitwyn stepped out half a beat behind the Crow, and Leliana was a step behind her.  Together they peppered the backs of darkspawn with arrows through stinging eyes. From below the hill two voices rose now familiar if still untillegiable phrases. A purple bolt of lighting streaked past Caitwyn’s vision and sizzled along a line of darkspawn just as a nimbus of blue light surrounded and then sank into the three close-quarters fighters. 

Up on the rise and back from the thick of the fighting, Caitwyn could see everything, and she switched from damaging the darkspawn to softening them up.  One genlock she shot through the foot, a hurlock she hit a buckle on its armor, and the darkspawn died in slick puddles of black blood and wet gurgles. 

These houses still burned fiercely, and Caitwyn sweat heavily under her armor.  Her mouth was bone dry, and she wanted nothing more than to stop. To curse the idea that a golem would be worth any of this.  Across the oval-shaped green, past where the frozen golem stood, a hurlock roared, and it was as though a fat worm wiggled up her legs.  Alistair blazed once more, but Caitwyn only want it all to  _ stop _ .  All of it.  The darkspawn from attacking, the fires from burning, her unruly tangle of thoughts that she had no control over.

As if she was outside her body, Caitwyn pulled her bow back to a full draw, took aim through smoke irritated eyes and loosed.  Again and again, she fired with all the strength she had in her arms and back until it died with a gurgle Caitwyn could just make out underneath the crack of burning homes.  Away from the thick of the action, no one saw as she took heavy, steadying breaths, and she wiped the tears out of her eyes. The others were doing the same. It was the smoke.  Only the smoke.

In the still and stifling air, Caitwyn coughed.  The soot of the ruined village blanketed the grass and settled on her armor.  She pushed her awareness to its limits, but with the darkspawn dead she no longer felt the oily, creeping sense of them along her skin.  All she could sense was the warmth that Alistair gave off, and she quickly folded her awareness back onto itself, pulling herself behind her walls until she was safe.  Safe and alone.

“Let’s see if this control rod works,” she said as if she hadn’t nearly lost control of herself.  Striding up the small rise, she came face to face, such as it was, with the golem she had sought out.  The still form of the golem dominated the area. It was massive, and she’d  _ been _ a golem in a manner of speaking.  The area safe for now, she didn’t look behind to see if the others—or anyone in particular—followed to her where the golem stood.  Without preamble, she withdrew the control rod from her pack, said the command word as clearly as she could, and then a whole lot of nothing happened.

“I suppose it was too much to hope for, a golem.”  Alistair’s voice bounced in her ears, and she resisted the urge to turn around and say  _ Sorry can’t turn into one anymore either. _  It was too easy, talking with him, but she couldn’t engage.  She had to put that distance back between them. She had to. If only for her own sake.

“This has been a pointless exercise.”

“I am not so certain. Perhaps  we could find survivors. The villagers might know more of this golem.”

“An excellent thought, my dear Leliana.  I believe I can see one building has remained relatively intact.  A point of safety, perhaps, for whoever did not die in the attack, yes?”

“If any still live, Caitwyn, we should do what we can to help them.”  The last was Wynne, which made Morrigan snort with disdain as if on cue.  Caitwyn could all but feel the witch’s sneer. “Regardless, of any living persons, we might yet still discover the way to activate this golem.  T’is a marvel of magical creation, and should not be left here.”

Caitwyn fought down a sigh.  They might fight together well, but present them with any course of action and they would bicker about it until the pigeons came back to roost.  It was worse than when she had been still a child and trying to get Soris and Shianni to agree on anything. They were right about one thing. She had a choice.  Give up the golem or keep looking for answers.

Giving up would mean going back to camp.  And being around Alistair and his warm, too comfortable presence.  Too near that crooked grin and those kind eyes. Even if she ensconced herself with Leliana and kept learning to fletch her own arrows, he’d still be  _ there _ .

“Wynne’s right,” she lied.  “We should look for survivors.  And if along the way we find a way to activate the golem, all the better.  Sten, Morrigan, Leliana, hold things down up here. Wynne and Zevran, you’re with me.”

“Um, what about me?” Alistair asked, his tone mildly curious.  She did turn to face him then, having to all but force her head to turn, but she managed it.  One ruddy-blonde eyebrow arched up in what might be simple amusement. “If you’re leaving Sten up here, then shouldn’t I come with you?” 

Caitwyn wanted to kick herself.  He was right. 

“Yes, right.  You, too.” Then she strode for the door to the safe house, determined not to look at him ever again unless she absolutely had to.

 

* * *

 

_ Of course there were darkspawn. _

Alistair should not have been surprised when he had caught a whiff of their telltale rot as they had approached the village.  He’d wanted to talk to Cait that morning, but she had rousted them all out of camp early to make Honnleath before midday. She hadn’t even spared him a backwards glance as she’d trotted ahead to scout with her dog.  

Now they were carefully wending their way through what appeared to be an underground mage’s study, and there were still more darkspawn.  It was worse fighting them in these tight spaces, but they had little choice. Caitwyn took point, slinking around corners, a lithe shadow, with her scout’s hood pulled up over her hair.  Though the tail of her braid spilled out from the hood and swung ever so gently as she ghosted up a set of stairs. Maker help him, he couldn’t take his eyes off her as she paused at the top step and counted out darkspawn.  So many of the blasted things together like this, they couldn’t always tell how many they’d be facing. 

Their rot filled his nose and he swallowed heavily.  He tried to breathe as shallowly as he could, but underneath the corruption and spoiled meat odor of the darkspawn he caught a hint of flowers and the waft of clean water.   _ Caitwyn _ .  Across camp or a field, if he focused on her, the scent came to him and pulled his head inexorably in her direction.  Clean water and flowers, it cut through the stomach-turning stench that hunkered around him, and he could breathe a touch easier.  

She knelt, her form blending with the shadows around her as she advanced up the last stair and snuck up on a genlock.  Alistair held himself ready. He’d go next, then Zevran, Wynne at the back. He couldn’t step on even the first stair without making noise, so he waited several heart-pounding moments.  His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword and he worked his left shoulder to set his shield better. As ready as he’d ever be.

The  _ snick _ of a leg trap cut through the guttural mouthings of the darkspawn, and Alistair took the steps two at a time clanking as he went.  The genlock caught in the trap was his first target. He slashed his sword across its throat with a gout of nearly black blood. It gurgled as it collapsed, but he didn’t stop to see if it was truly dead.  Zevran would follow in Alistair’s wake with his daggers and finish anything that still moved. Wynne began to cast a spell, her defensive magic tingling along his skin, and not a moment too soon as a gob of acid splattered against his arm, hissing through his armor and dripping onto his skin.

He grunted, but the pain was blunted thanks to Wynne’s defenses.  A moment later an arrow streaked out the darkness and hit the emissary that had struck him with magic, sinking into a gap in its armor.  His eyes flickered to the direction the arrow had come from, and he saw Caitwyn, her face a mask as she knocked and drew another arrow for the same target.  The emissary yowled, more in rage than pain. Alistair charged the hurlock between himself and the darkspawn mage on the higher landing, and put out of his mind the fact that Caitwyn normally bought him time with a spellcaster  _ before _ he got hit.

Slamming his shield into a hurlock, again before Caitwyn could aid him by shattering the creature’s armor, it still staggered back and left his path clear.  He flung himself up another half set of stairs and reached for that quiet place. It took all his concentration and his world narrowed to the quiet beyond the Fade and the sickly flare of the emissary in front of him.  The creature was chanting again, its voice high and thready. Maybe with fear. Likely with anger. 

It’s clawed hands wove a complicated gesture, but just before it could release the spell Alistair let the quiet fill his whole body and he brought his sword down, neatly slicing off one of its hands.  The searing green magic fizzled away, and the creature screamed. In a rage, it flung its mutilated body at him, but he caught the stump and claws on his shield and pinned it against the far wall. It flailed madly, and its blood smelled worse than it skin: gangrenous flesh, the worst of open sewers, and fetid swamps.  Fighting down the urge to gag, he let the quiet go and tried to sense Caitwyn. She was there, no longer just a pool of clean, crisp water, but a torrent, a river in flood, and he tasted the echo of water on his tongue. She was fighting, fighting the same fight he was, and without hesitation he sank his sword into the darkspawn’s side.  It squealed as it died, bloody stump and clawed fingers trying to reach him, but Alistair’s shield held it at bay.

It was the last of this pack to die, and Alistair backed away letting it slump to the ground with a clatter of pitted and rusting armor.  A heavy puff of breath escaped him, and he turned to survey the damage. With the darkspawn dead, he only could smell their normal flesh rot, not the the pervasive odor of tainted creatures.  Caitwyn glanced up at him, and had this been even two days ago she might have favored him with that sharp grin of hers that made her eyes glint like those of a fox in the dark. Now her eyes flickered away, and his own grin died on his face.

There was no way around it.  She was ignoring him. The word  _ why _ kept tumbling around his head like a taunting jester.  Did he do something wrong? Had he been rejected before he’d even had a chance to  _ ask _ .  

The very thought of that, being rejected out of hand, set off a little spark in his mind.  Story of his life, wasn’t it? Well, not this time. Not with her. He’d tell her, no matter what.  At least he could  _ say _ the damned words and know for sure.  Even if she didn’t say the words he wanted to hear in return.

 

* * *

 

The fire-sculpted rage demons burst into reality from the stone floor, turning the cool sub-basement into a heatbox.  The air in Caitwyn’s mouth was suddenly dry, but she lined up her shot on the desire demon. The creature drew in a breath and then screamed.  The wail rattled through Caitwyn’s skull, and she saw Zevran stagger as well, his daggers tipping down. Alistair appeared unaffected and charged the demon, but she easily floated aside of his strike and sunk her long-nailed fingers through his helm.  

He staggered and listed as if his shield and armor were suddenly too heavy.  

The rage demons closed in, bringing their burning heat closer.  The threat cut through the treacle-slowness of her mind, and she drew one of the cold-enchanted arrows she had been able to find.  The arrowhead steamed in the blistering air, radiating cold like the heart of winter. Beyond the wall of enraged fire, she caught sight of Alistair weakly swinging his sword and barely holding the desire demon at bay.  

Her fault.

She loosed an arrow into the formless bulk of the rage demon, the enchanted cold hissing and steaming as it sunk into the creature.  It screamed and sped toward her, grabbing her with its hideous facsimile of arms. It  _ burned _ her, searing through her armor and to her flesh, making her skin blacken and crack, filling her nose with the scent of cooking meat.  Her meat, her body. She bit down, trying to swallow a scream, but blood filled her mouth from biting her own tongue. 

Her fault for being a stupid girl.

Zevran bit off a curse and swung his dagger up through the demon’s arms.  Caitwyn fell back to the floor, her body knowing how to take the fall as she tucked up and rolled away.  Wynne was at her side already, healing the burns. Flesh smoothed and knit and was suddenly unburned, the healing itself soothing and cooling.  But the memory of her own body burning lingered. Caitwyn drew a shaky breath.

She had to be better than this.

Wynne caught her eye, a question there, and Caitwyn pushed everything that was weak and unwanted down and away.  Into the box where she kept all the other things that she didn’t want to think about. She could imagine it, sitting in the back of a darkened room much like this, pulsing and straining at all that she hid in that box.  Just one more thing to hide away. Just one more. All warmth fled as Caitwyn closed out everything that didn’t matter. Everything that shouldn’t matter. Ice filled her body, cracking and creaking like a river frozen all the way to the bottom.  

She stood, and in a moment evaluated the situation.  Alistair cut off, Zevran unable to hold his own against two rage demons.  Her and Wynne at the back. Now was the time for speed. Sacrificing accuracy, Caitwyn rapidly fired her arrows into the rage demon at Zevran’s back.  Each arrow was its own barb of the deepest winter, and she pelted the demons. Several arrows went astray, clatting and hissing along the stone floor, but she wasn’t trying to hurt them deeply.  The striking them with any ice at all mattered more than a well-placed shot. 

Wynne pulsed with a pale blue light and a rhime of frost encased the demon in front of the assassin.  Zevran hammered his dagger through the coating of ice and the demon shattered into a thousand jagged spikes of ice over the stone floor.  Caitwyn spared no time with the second demon, pulling her bow to full draw and losing a broadhead arrow into one of the fine, spindly cracks in the demon’s shell.  It, too, shattered, and now the desire demon was alone.

Blood dripped off of Alistair’s chin, but he still stood after having to hold his own against a desire demon.  The demon, seeing herself surrounded, twirled and stomped her foot on empty air as if it were solid. A blast of force threw them all backwards.  She heard the clatter and scrape of metal on stone, but the world went black and sideways as her head struck the floor. Blood filled her mouth again, and she tried to roll over to spit out out.  

Her vision swam, the world doubled and imposed on itself, and she watched as the demon sauntered toward her.  There was no seeing its expression, but Caitwyn knew that walk. A walk of vain triumph. This is what she got for trying to lie to a demon.  For thinking she was clever and good. She wasn’t. Never had been.

A fist of stone slammed into the demon at blinding speed.

Caitwyn blinked, unsure of what she had just seen.  She struggled to her feet and saw the demon slumping against the far wall, only for Zevran to close in on her and drive his daggers up through her ribs and to where her heart should be.

With a whimpering sigh, the demon died.  Its body fell apart like a handful of sand on the wind.  Wynne made her rounds, touching a hand to their shoulders and weaving back together what had been rent asunder in their bodies.  Caitwyn tried to hold on to her heart of ice, to focus on her next tasks. Ensuring the child had returned to her father, getting the proper command phrase, and so on.  One after the next, she would focus on her tasks and leave her pointless and  _ dangerous _ distraction behind her.  

But then she caught Alistair’s tentative smile—as though she wasn’t at fault for what had happened—and the warmth of him threatened all her composure and control.  The box in the dark of her mind swelled, and an unwanted, sheepish grin curved her mouth in return.

She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it.  Hard enough to admit she couldn’t control how she felt, but she refused to let that determine how she reacted.  She  _ could _ control that.  She had to. For all their sakes.  

 

* * *

 

Alistair’s shoulders relaxed a fraction at Caitwyn’s shy grin.  He had no idea what was going on in her head lately, but at seeing her smile back at him, however small that smile might’ve been, put a lightness back in his step.  They had done good today. Saved a little girl, killed a demon, helped some villagers and were going to get a golem for all their trouble.

And she’d smiled at him again.

A very good day, all things considered.

He was going to give her that rose for sure, though he’d already started revising what he was going to say.  Maybe if he approached it sort of roundabout, that might help? Refrain from blurting out his feelings like an idiot.  He wasn’t sure if he’d manage that, but he’d try. And soon, before he lost his nerve.


End file.
